Thursday, August 25, 2016

Sen. Ted Cruz Tuesday accused the Obama administration of stonewalling Congress on how it paid $1.3 billion in taxpayer money to Iran along with the $400 million in cash for the release of five American hostages in January.

"The already bizarre circumstances surrounding the $1.7 billion payment to the Islamic Republic have only gotten stranger in the weeks since we learned of the $400 million in cash that was sent to the Iranian regime last January 16th," the former 2016 presidential candidate told The Washington Free Beacon. "If this payment was, as the Obama administration insists, a straightforward settlement of an old debt that it would have cost America more to contest, why all the secrecy?"

The White House has claimed that the $400 million was to settle a 1979 dispute with Tehran, with the remaining $1.3 billion described as "interest."